SEO Tycoon

**willcode4beer** · 07:25 PM

Today at work, after giving a code review, I gave a recommended reading list.
One of my co-workers mentioned that she saw the list on my site. (my list is a bit dated). This got me curious so, I ran a search for "Java Reading List"
Wow, I'm number 2.

Here's why the most common SEO advice doesn't make sense.
The page has a PR of 2 (my site PR is 4).
According to google sitemaps, there are 2 incoming links to the page.

The pages below me have 10's of thousands of incoming links and double my PR.

It's a similar situation for "html quote tag" and "quote tag". (wooo 64 inbound links) and "dojo tree"

According to the majority of link chasing SEO advice, I shouldn't even be on the first 100 pages, let alone rank at the top.
This tells me two things:
- PR means jack
- number of incoming links means jack

To be honest, I've put very little effort in promoting the site (I know I should do more, just lazy).

Experts, what's going on?
Does Google just love me?
What the heck am I doing right?

I can only guess that the engineers (like all engineers) love beer and give extra ranking for it

**vangogh** · 06:38 PM

Your ranking makes sense. Links do play a part and PR (real PR, not toolbar PR) does play a part, but the highest ranking page isn't necessarily the one with the most PR or the most links. If that were the case Google would rank for most everything.

You have to consider the specific keyword phrase. In this case the phrase isn't particularly competitive. The less competitive the phrase the more likely on-page factors will make the difference. If you look at the top 10 results (I see you #3 by the way) your's is the only page using all 3 words in the page title. Your page is probably more optimized for the specific phrase than the other pages.

Also the quality of the links are more important than the quantity of the links. I didn't spend any time analyzing the links all the pages are getting, but the links pointing to your page could easily be of a higher quality for the keyword phrase than the other pages. Maybe they use anchor text more related to the phrase or come from sites Google considers more trustworthy or related to the phrase.

When I look at most of the top 10-15 pages ranking only a small few have more links pointing to the page (not the entire site) than you do. I see your page having 5 links pointing to it. The page ranking just below you is from Amazon. Amazon has tons of links pointing to their site, but the page in question only has one link pointing to it.

The pages I see that have more links pointing to them are the two ranking above you and a page below on the about.com site. The about.com page is about java though, and not a java reading list. It does happen to use the words list and reading on it, which is why it shows up, but it's not a page about 'java reading list'

Your page doesn't use the exact phrase, but it uses 'reading list' in several places and it does use 'java developers reading list' From a human perspective your page is much more about 'java reading list' than the about.com page and so should rank higher.

Now if the about.com page added the exact phrase once on the page it would probably jump above you and probably into the #1 spot, especially if it used the phrase in the page title.

Ranking is based on a combination of factors. All the links to about.com help it rank for a lot more things than your site ranks for, but in this particular case your page ranks better for one particular phrase.

**willcode4beer** · 06-13-2008, 12:15 PM

interesting.

I guess I've never really given any thought to keywords. The whole keyword, search/analysis thing just seemed like too much work for me.

The things with the quote tag and dojo toolkit seem to be the most bizarre though. Seems like a lot of sites talking about those for my little one to show up.

**Learning Newbie** · 06-13-2008, 02:59 PM

I don't have much time to look (meeting coming up) but I'm going to have to agree with Van the Gogh and say it's algorithmic. Google servers don't even know for sure you like beer, so they've got to be either picking that up from your HTML coding, or taking algo clues like Van mentioned.

**vangogh** · 06-13-2008, 06:46 PM

Paul none of those phrases are all that competitive. Quote tag had about a million results, but even that's not too competitive. When you search for 'quote tag' without the quotes ("") Google is returning pages that contain the word 'quote' and the word 'tag' Most of those pages aren't really relevant to the phrase though.

If you do wrap quotes around the query "quote tag" the results drop to 180,000. Again looking at the links into the page your page has far more links into it than the other results around it. The pages above yours do have more and the #2 result is helped because it's domain is quotetag.com. The results below you all have little to no links pointing into the page.

**toronto-seo** · 06-14-2008, 09:25 PM

1 million links to a page will not rank the site for a term like "blue widget" unless:
- The term "blue widget" is used many times in the anchor text
- The page has the term mentioned

The number of links itself means nothing other wise you will find Google.com #1 for any search query.

**dvduval** · 06-14-2008, 09:46 PM

Build a great site that people will love. Build a core group of users. Expand that group. Do some light SEO like directory submissions, and on page optimization. But overall, work on making a site people will want to return to often, and you will have something very special.

**willcode4beer** · 06-16-2008, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dvduval

Build a great site that people will love. Build a core group of users. Expand that group. Do some light SEO like directory submissions, and on page optimization. But overall, work on making a site people will want to return to often, and you will have something very special.

It looks like I'm fine with just the on page optimization.

If I'm too lazy to do keyword research, there's no way I'm going to play the directory submission game.

Folks who are looking for what I have seem to find it without any trouble.

**johniman7** · 06-17-2008, 11:04 PM

I have noticed on uncompetitive keywords, brand new pages I make that have good keyword density, meta tags, and title tags, the whole deal outrank pages on major sites in my genre. Usually these are older pages that are not as well optimized and were not targeted for that exact keyphrase.

**Eclion** · 06-19-2008, 12:35 AM

Same here johniman7. But I think part of the reason too is that Google gives some sort of boost to new pages.

**vangogh** · 06-19-2008, 02:13 AM

Quote:

Usually these are older pages that are not as well optimized and were not targeted for that exact keyphrase.

That's really the key. You have to remember the results are for the specific phrase that's typed. Those older pages might rank for a lot more phrases than you do and so end up getting a lot more traffic, but you can still outrank them for specific phrases.

**chrishirst** · 06-19-2008, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eclion

But I think part of the reason too is that Google gives some sort of boost to new pages.

Correct

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...tml#post735550

**Learning Newbie** · 06-19-2008, 05:56 PM

Why do people suppose Google gives a boost to new pages? Testing the water, or something else?

**vangogh** · 06-19-2008, 07:16 PM

Just guessing on the why, but some Google algorithms are certainly iterative. PageRank for example. If Google is using user data like click throughs and time spent on the page, etc. it would make sense to rank new pages well at first to collect that data.

Another thought is just to keep their results fresher. If you search on the same or similar queries you probably want to see new results every so often.

The conspiracy theorist might argue they want you to see a temporary gain in traffic so when they yank it from you later you run to sign up for AdWords. I hope it's clear I'm kidding and don't think for a minute this is the case.

I think it's mostly the iterative thing. It's not necessarily the user data, but I think some of the ranking algorithms are iterative and new pages end up with an artificial boost until they settle in to where they'll inevitably rank.

All just guess work on my part though. (Except that conspiracy theory. That one is true.)

**splenditello** · 06-20-2008, 10:17 AM

very informative thread, bill congrats on being ranked so highly in a particular niche. i would have to agree that in my experiences google does seem to favor new content...i think it lets the algorithm know that its not a stale site.

**Kaabi** · 06-21-2008, 12:59 AM

The other sites probably just didn't target those keyphrases. If they had been targeting them intently, I guarantee they'd be higher than you. But just because some place has higher PR than you doesn't mean they'll beat you in everything.